I looked up to emphasize the point. “Well, it is kind of inclement.”
“I’m off to the Caribbean tomorrow, if it ever stops, and wanted to clear out my shop.” He leveled an eye on me. “In sixteen years, I’ve never seen a workday when Geo Stewart closed. I guess it’s all different now that he’s gone.”
“You heard?”
“Yep, and when I pulled up to the house to see what was going on, Gina was piling stuff into that piece-of-shit Toronado again like she was pretty intent on going somewhere else.”
I glanced at Vic, then back to the sculptor. “You sure she wasn’t unloading? We caught her on 16 the last time you called and turned her back.”
He thought about it. “Hell, she might’ve been unloading for all I know.”
“Well, we’ll go in and check on her.”
He shook his head and began rolling up his window. “Good luck.”
The Toronado was parked in the driveway close to the house, but the snow on it had been swiped off recently.
I stopped behind it and threw the truck into park. “Let’s go.”
Dog started his leap over the center console and into the front. “Not you. If those two beasts of theirs are in there, I don’t need you starting anything.”
He looked disappointed, but I left the windows down a little and shut the door after me. Vic was at the front of the truck when I got there. She glanced up at me. “I’m assuming you didn’t mean me?”
We trudged through the snow to the driver’s-side door of the Toronado. “Does that look like more crap than was in there before?”
My deputy peered through the frosted window. “Arf.”
I studied the prints leading up to the house and onto the porch; three trips at least. It appeared that Gina was still intent on leaving, even with the weather and the warning.
The conversation with Duane hadn’t been as bad as I’d assumed it would be, considering the nature of the subject matter. When she told him she was pregnant and that the father was not him, he seemed surprised but not particularly upset.
In the amount of time I’d been contemplating the Stewart social order, another quarter of an inch of snow had accumulated on the two of us. Without another word, we picked our way among the fresh prints to the house and met Gina coming out with a laundry basket full of clothes.
“Howdy.”
She started with a short scream and almost dropped the basket. “Jesus Christ!”
“Sorry.” Vic and I stepped onto the porch in an attempt to not accumulate even more snow. “What are you doing, Gina?”
She dropped the light blue plastic laundry basket after the question and took the smoldering cigarette from the corner of her mouth. “Leavin’.”
“We told you to stick around.”
“Yeah, well . . .” She glanced back into the open doorway of the house. “Grampus is dead, Duane’s in jail, and I’m getting the fuck out of here. I don’t give a shit what you told me to do.”
Butch and Sundance appeared in the doorway, protective of Gina and obviously concerned that we were abusing their mistress. Butch, the one that had bitten me in the ass, was the nearest and was growling.
“In case you haven’t noticed, the weather is pretty brutal, and the HPs have closed all the highways.”
She took a strong puff on the cigarette, pregnancy be damned. “Fuckit. I’m still leavin’, and you can’t stop me.”
I let that pass. “Something happen?”
“Morris came over, and I told him about the baby, and he went all ape shit.”
“Geo’s brother Morris?”
“Yeah, he’s upstairs going through some of Grampus’ stuff.”
“I don’t know if I’ve ever heard him speak three words . . .” I could feel my headache coming back and wondered if they really had anything to do with my eye. “Would you like me to speak to him?”
“No. Fuckit, I’m leavin’.”
“You’re not going to get very far.”
“I don’t care.” She started to bend over and pick up the basket. “I’m leavin’.”
“I’m sorry, but you’re not.” The dogs caught my tone, even if she hadn’t, and were now both growling.
Vic unsnapped the safety strap on her Glock. “Call ’em off, or I’ll throw a warning shot through both their fucking heads.”
When you go to a dogfight, it’s always good to bring the meanest bitch.
Gina casually glanced back and then screamed at them. “Shut up!”
The dogs went immediately silent. “Gina, if you leave here now you’re not going to go anywhere except a ditch and then we’re going to have to pull you out. Just stay put and let me talk to Morris, and then, if we have to, we’ll give you an escort to a motel. Okay?”
She looked even more sullen than usual, turned with her load, and went back into the House of Usher, followed by the two Hounds of the Baskervilles.
There were more things piled by the doorway than I would’ve guessed would fit in the Classic, but who was I to judge. “Where is Morris?”
“Upstairs in Grampus’ room. He said he was gonna get Grampus’ gun and shoot me.”
Vic and I looked at each other. “Really?”
She studied me as if I were a variety of moron she’d never met before. “Yeah, really.”
“You stay here with Vic, and I’ll go upstairs.”
“Fine by me. I’m gonna get a pop in the kitchen.”
“You guys wait for me in there.” Vic nodded, and I took a step up the stairway. “Morris! It’s Walt Longmire, are you up there?”
Nothing.
It was odd, and I found it hard to believe that Morris Stewart would’ve responded in the manner she’d described. “Morris! Sheriff ’s Department coming up the stairs!”
Nothing.
It was my first time in the inner sanctum of the house, and from the look of things on the landing, the upstairs wasn’t any better than the downstairs. Junk cluttered the steps and continued down the hallway. There was a path down the middle, but car parts, stacks of papers, magazines, and cans of paint were stacked on either side. The place was an arsonist’s dream. I thought about how they cleaned the chimney with a mop full of kerosene and shuddered.
“Morris, are you up here?”
There were six doorways in the hall; five of them had the doors closed with the sixth, the one at the end, slightly ajar. I picked my way through the debris and placed a hand on my sidearm. “Morris!”
I opened the nearest door—it was obviously Duane and Gina’s. There were car posters on the walls and a huge canopy bed that looked like it might’ve been bought at a discount furniture place, the kind you see in tents alongside the road. The only light in the room was a digital clock that was an hour off. I stared at it for a few moments, thinking that there was something about it that was important.
Something about that clock and the time.
I decided I’d start at the other end of the hallway with the door that was slightly open and work my way back. The floor creaked under my boots, and I started feeling like Gina, trapped in the Addams Family mansion.
“Morris?” I nudged the door open—the gauzelike curtain on the other side of the room was flowing like the oversized sleeve of a ghost, to complete the analogy, and snow was piling up on the floor underneath the window. I moved to close it and go on to the next room when I saw something lying in a single bed to the left.
It was a tiny fold-out cot, really, but piled with sheets, blankets, and even a moldy buffalo hide. On closer inspection, the thing had horsehair tails hanging from the edges and intricate beading indicative of the late eighteenth century—probably worth a fortune but for the holes and the hair that was falling off of it.
Something moved under the pile of coverings, and I took the couple of steps to the bedside. “Morris?”
Whatever it was, it wasn’t moving anymore, so I reached forward and peeled the blankets back. It was Morris, and there was a great deal of blood saturated in the dirty sheets. The blood had come from a bullet wound in his chest, almost identical to the wound that Ozzie Dobbs had sustained.